After more than 10 years in charge of the visual arts programme at the Customs House in South Shields, Esen Kaya has departed with good wishes ringing in her ears.

Less widely reported is the fact that the venue’s gallery, currently sponsored by Port of Tyne, is closing.

Ray Spencer, executive director of the Customs House, explained that the situation came down to money.

He said the latest Customs House funding application to Arts Council England, for the four-year period starting next March, had suggested the relocation of the gallery to the nearby St Hilda’s Colliery Pit Head where it would have more space and help to “bring it back to life”.

The nearby Grade II-listed building, owned by South Tyneside Council, is being restored with funding from Heritage Lottery Fund and other trusts and foundations.

Ray said: “We suggested the gallery could relocate there but in order to go there we would have to have an uplift (in funding).

“We were unsuccessful in that uplift. We also said that as we would now be getting less money than in 2008, we wouldn’t be able to continue to do everything that we were doing.

“We could no longer continue to do curated exhibitions unless we had an uplift and the Arts Council decided not to give us that and so not support the transfer of the gallery.

“Esen is working on a drawing project with Sunderland University and decided to take the opportunity to leave earlier than March when we knew that curator’s post would no longer be supported by the Arts Council.”

Esen Kaya with Dave Parker from the North East Maritime Trust (Image: Customs House, South Shields)

As a member of the Arts Council’s national portfolio, the Customs House has been granted standstill funding of £100,678 per year from 2018 until 2022.

Ray said there had been a gallery at the Customs House since the venue first opened in 1994 but the curator’s post had been created in 2006, when Esen was appointed.

Creating a ‘white box’ gallery for a curated exhibition programme had been an ambitious step for the Customs House.

While Esen’s “ambition for excellence” had driven up the quality of work the Customs House had been able to exhibit, said Ray, the gallery had been “quite an expensive overhead.

“You have to have the lights on all day and you need separate insurance for it.”

He said: “Essen has done some great stuff but you suddenly come to a point of saying, ‘What do we do less of?’

“We don’t get a lot of money to start with but in 2022 we’ll get less money than we did in 2008.

“South Tyneside Council are hugely supportive of us but the money we get from them goes down every year – so something had to give.”

Ray said while the Arts Council subsidy had gone down, costs had gone up, although a report in 2014 showed only 14% of the Customs House’s turnover came from the public purse.

“We work hard to earn the rest of the money. We’re not happy to be closing the gallery but we can’t keep doing everything.”

Ray said there would still be art around the building.

“We’ll never stop doing that because it’s part of the arts offer that we have.”

He said currently they were looking at a bid for capital funding to remodel the front of the building and change the use of some of the spaces within the building.

Esen Kaya said: “I have absolutely loved my job. I feel very proud to have represented the Customs House as a contemporary arts centre that aims to enable people of all ages, abilities and backgrounds to access arts and culture.

“I have been fortunate to work with a broad range of artists and makers that are not only based in the region, but nationally and internationally. I have had the chance to bring the work of really exciting international artists to the Customs House so the people of South Tyneside and the rest of the region were able to see a really broad spectrum of contemporary art.”

She said the exhibition that had had the biggest impact had been Casting Off: Coat for a Boat in 2009, during which a 20ft coble covered in knitting was launched onto the Tyne.

Ray Spencer said the gallery programme would continue as planned until March next year.

Showing until November 12 is Drawn by artist Anita Taylor, work from the past two decades by the co-founder of the Jerwood Drawing Prize and one time artist-in-residence at Durham Cathedral.

It is part of a series of exhibitions being held across the region under the title Drawing, running until December 3, which will see Esen Kaya returning to the gallery in November to oversee a follow-up exhibition, Drawing Closer.

Anita Taylor will chair a symposium at The Word in South Shields in November to address the question: Does Drawing Matter?

Jane Tarr, director North, Arts Council England, said: “Like most of our funded organisations, Customs House has to make hard choices about what it can deliver.

“Unfortunately we don’t have the money to fund everything we and they would like to do so we agreed to a reduced programme.

“Very few organisations have been offered increased funding for the next four years and all applicants were aware that uplifts would be exceptional. The work Customs House delivers with, by and for children and young people is outstanding, so we’re pleased that they’ll be focusing on that in 2018-22. However, we are sad to see the end of the gallery programme which included many inspiring and memorable shows.”

She added: “We know there are a lot of talented artists in South Tyneside looking for space to show work and we’re talking to Ray and South Tyneside about how a visual arts programme could operate outside a gallery space, or in different spaces in the Customs House, which could be a really exciting opportunity for more people to get involved.”